Category: Blog

The same holds true for those of us who are currently employed in design and development. Having worked on the web for about three years at this point, I’ve seen the typical wax and wane of concepts, strategies, and systems. Every day we as developers and designers get into a routine pattern, a brand-new concept or technology emerges to shake things up and completely alter our planet.

How we got below

I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

The development of online standards

At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

Server-side language like PHP, Java, and.NET took Perl as the primary back-end computers, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the garbage bin. With these improved server-side equipment, the first period of internet programs started with content-management techniques (especially those used in blogs like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ) In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened gates for sequential interaction between the front end and back close. Pages was now revise their content without having to reload it. A grain of Script frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and ruby arose to aid developers develop more credible client-side conversation across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like photo replacement enable skilled manufacturers and developers to show fonts of their choosing. And technology like Flash made it possible to include movies, sports, and even more engagement.

These new methods, requirements, and solutions greatly boosted the sector’s growth. Web style flourished as creators and designers explored more different styles and designs. However, we also relied heavily on tricks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). All kinds of nested floats or absolute positioning were required for complicated layouts ( or both ). Display and photo substitute for specialty styles was a great start toward varying the designs from the big five, but both tricks introduced convenience and efficiency issues. And JavaScript libraries made it simple for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, even at the expense of double, even quadrupling, the download size of basic websites.

The web as software platform

The interplay between the front end and the back end continued to grow, which led to the development of the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages ( which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others ) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Along with these tools, there were additional options, such as collaborative build automation, collaborative version control, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

Mobile devices also increased in their capabilities, and they gave us access to internet in our pockets at the same time. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

This fusion of potent mobile devices and potent development tools contributed to the growth of social media and other centralized tools for people to use and interact with. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media provided connections on a global scale, with both positive and negative outcomes.

Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? ” Of Time and the Web” was written by Jeremy Keith. Or check out the” Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. Additionally, Neal Agarwal takes a fascinating tour of” Internet Artifacts.”

Where we are now

It seems like we’ve reached yet another significant turning point in recent years. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. From the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators and content management systems of all kinds, there are many different ways to create websites. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other IndieWeb tools can be useful in this regard, but they’re still largely underdeveloped and difficult to use for the less geeky. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

Browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other web components has increased, particularly with initiatives like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I frequently find out about a new feature and check its browser support only to discover that its coverage is already over 80 %. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

We can prototype almost any idea today with just a few commands and a few lines of code. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. However, the upfront cost these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes down as the maintenance and upgrading they become a part of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks, which previously made it easier to adopt new techniques sooner, have since evolved into obstacles. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And frequently, when scripts fail ( whether due to poor code, network problems, or other environmental factors ), users are left with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Hacks of today help to shape standards for the future. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we refuse to acknowledge that they are hacks or when we choose not to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. weigh the costs associated with those user-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What does each user pay? To future developers? to the adoption of standards? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve gotten used to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

Start with standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. Not all third-party frameworks are the same. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the’ 90s still work just fine today. The same can’t always be said of websites created with frameworks even after a few years.

Design with care. Consider the effects of each choice, whether it is your craft, which is code, pixels, or processes. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with consideration rather than rush to “move fast and break things”

Always be learning. If you constantly learn, you also develop. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. Even if you were to concentrate solely on learning standards, you might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year. ( Remember XHTML? ) However, ongoing learning opens up new neural connections, and the techniques you learn in one day may be useful for guiding future experiments.

Play, experiment, and be weird! The ultimate experiment is this web that we’ve created. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be brave and try something new. Build a playground for ideas. In your own bizarre science lab, conduct absurd experiments. Start your own small business. There has never been a place where we have more room to be creative, take risks, and discover our potential.

Share and amplify. Share what you think has worked for you as you experiment, play, and learn. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

Go ahead and create.

As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s incorporate our values into the products we produce, and let’s improve the world for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then, share it, improve it, re-create it, or create something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you have the ability to use the internet.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m no trying to reject any of what he’s saying, but rather to give some context to initiatives and opportunities where AI may produce real, positive impacts on people with disabilities. I want to take some time to talk about what’s possible in hope that we’ll get there one day. I’m no saying that there aren’t real challenges or pressing problems with AI that need to be addressed; there are.

Other text

Joe’s article spends a lot of time addressing computer-vision types ‘ ability to create other words. He raises a lot of appropriate points regarding the state of the world right now. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their benefits aren’t wonderful. He argues to be accurate that the state of image research is currently very poor, especially for some graphic types, in large part due to the absence of contextual contexts in which to look at images ( as a result of having separate “foundation” models for words analysis and image analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( which should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( which might not even need a description ) either. However, I still think there’s possible in this area.

As Joe points out, alt text publishing via human-in-the-loop should be a given. And if AI can intervene to provide a starting place for alt text, even if the rapid might say What is this BS? That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a gain.

If we can specifically station a design to examine image usage in context, this may help us more quickly determine which images are likely to be elegant and which ones are likely to be descriptive. That will help clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way ( even for humans ), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s say you came across a map that was simply the name of the table and the type of visualization it was: Pie table comparing smartphone use to have mobile usage among US households making under$ 30, 000 annually. ( That would be a pretty bad alt text for a chart because it frequently leaves many unanswered questions about the data, but let’s just assume that was the description in place. ) If your browser knew that that image was a pie chart ( because an onboard model concluded this ), imagine a world where users could ask questions like these about the graphic:

• Do more people use smartphones or other types of smartphones?
• How many more?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
• That number, how many?

For a moment, the chance to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for people who are blind and low vision as well as for those with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and other issues. Putting aside the realities of large language model ( LLM) hallucinations. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

What if you could ask your browser to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you asked it to separate a single line from a line graph? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you demanded that it switch colors in favor of patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. Perhaps it could convert that pie chart (or, better yet, a series of pie charts ) into more usable ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets, for instance. That would be incredible!

Matching algorithms

When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to put her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on the ways that search engines can foster racism, I believe it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to foster conflict, prejudice, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A large portion of this is a result of a lack of diversity in the people who design and construct them. However, when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind, there is real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

Take Mentra, for example. They serve as a network of people with disabilities. They employ an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on more than 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. It takes into account the workplace, the communication environment, and other factors. Mentra made the decision to change the script when it came to typical employment websites because it was run by neurodivergent people. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in, reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in the development of algorithms, this can lower the likelihood that these algorithms will harm their communities. Diverse teams are crucial because of this.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For instance, if you were to follow a group of non-disabled white male academics who talk about AI, it might be advisable to follow those who are disabled, aren’t white, or aren’t men who also talk about AI. If you followed its advice, you might be able to understand what is happening in the AI field more fully and nuancedly. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward ) those groups.

Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

I’m sure I could go on and on about using AI to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round if I weren’t trying to put this together in between other tasks. In no particular order:

preservation of voice You may have been aware of the voice-prescribing options from Microsoft, Acapela, or others, or you may have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s announcement for Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s disease ) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This technology can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it’s something we need to approach responsibly, but the technology has truly transformative potential.
• voice recognition is. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively seeking out people who have Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they intend to expand this list as the project develops. More people with disabilities will be able to use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as a result of this research, which will result in more inclusive data sets that will enable them to use their computers and other devices more easily and with just their voices.
• Text transformation. LLMs of the current generation are quite capable of changing text without creating hallucinations. This is incredibly empowering for those who have cognitive disabilities and who may benefit from text summaries, simplified versions, or even text that has been prepared for Bionic Reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

Our differences must be acknowledged as important. The intersections of the identities that we exist in have an impact on our lived experiences. These lived experiences—with all their complexities ( and joys and pain ) —are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences must be reflected in the data we use to develop new models, and those who provide that valuable information must be compensated for doing so. Stronger models can be created using inclusive data sets, which lead to more equitable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that the training data includes information about disabilities written by people with a range of disabilities.

Want a non-binary language model? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t soon replace human copy editors when it comes to sensitivity reading.

Want a coding copilot who can provide you with useful recommendations after the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubts about how dangerous AI will be for people today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the world. However, I also think we should acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes to our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for supporting the development of this article, Ashley Bischoff for providing me with invaluable editorial support, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

I have a creative side. Alchemy is what I do. It is a puzzle. I don’t perform it as much as I let it be done by me.

I have a creative side. Certainly all creative people approve of this brand. No everyone see themselves in this manner. Some innovative individuals practice technology in their work. That is the way they are, and I take that into account. Perhaps I even have a small fear for them. However, my staying and approach are different.

It distracts one to apologize and qualify in progress. That’s what my head does to destroy me. I’ll leave it alone for today. I may regret and then qualify. After I’ve said what I originally said. which is difficult enough.

Except when it is simple and flows like a beverage valley.

Sometimes it does. Maybe what I need to make arrives right away. When I say something at that time, I’ve learned not to say it because people often don’t work hard enough to acknowledge that the idea is the best idea even when you know it’s the best idea.

Sometimes I just keep working until the plan strikes me. It occasionally arrives right away, but I don’t remind people for three weeks. Often I blurt out the plan so quickly that I didn’t stop myself. like a child who discovered a medal in one of his Cracker Jacks. I occasionally manage to get away with this. Yes, that is the best plan, but often others disagree. The majority of the time, they don’t, and I regret that joy has faded.

Joy should be saved for the meeting, where it will matter. not the informal gathering that two different gatherings precede that appointment. Nothing understands why we hold these gatherings. We keep saying we’re getting rid of them, but we keep discovering new ways to get them. They occasionally also excel. But occasionally they detract from the actual job. Depending on what you do and where you do it, the ratio between when conferences are valuable and when they are a sad distraction vary. And who you are and how you go about doing it. I’ll go back and forth once more. I have a creative side. That is the style.

Often, a lot of diligent and persistent work ends up with something that is rarely useful. Maybe I have to accept that and move on to the next task.

Don’t inquire about the procedure. I have a creative side.

I have a creative side. I have no control over my desires. And I have no power over my best tips.

I can chisel aside, surround myself with information or photos, and occasionally that works. I can go for a move, which occasionally works. There is a Eureka that has nothing to do with sizzling fuel and flowing pots. I may be making dinner. I frequently have a plan for action when I wake up. The idea that may have saved me disappears almost as frequently as I become aware and part of the world once more in a senseless wind of oblivion. For imagination, in my opinion, comes from that other planet. the one that we enter in ambitions and, possibly, before and after death. But authors should be asking this, and I am not one of them. I have a creative side. And it’s for philosophers to build massive forces in their imaginative world that they claim to be true. That is yet another tangent, though. And it’s miserable. Whether or not I am innovative or not, this may be on a much larger issue. But that’s also a step backwards from what I’m trying to say.

Often, the outcome is evasion. And suffering. Do you know the actor who is tortured by the cliché? Even when the artist is trying to write a soft drink song, a call in a worn-out comedy, or a budget ask, that word is correct.

Some individuals who detest the idea of being called artistic perhaps been closeted artists, but that’s between them and their gods. No offence intended. Your assertions are also accurate. However, mine is for me.

Artists acknowledge their work.

Negatives are aware of cons, just like queers are aware of queers, just like real rappers are aware of true rappers. People have a lot of regard for designers. We revere, follow, and nearly deify the great types. Of course, deifying any person is a horrible error. We’ve been given a warning. Better is what we are. We are aware that people are really people. They argue, they are depressed, they regret their most critical decisions, they are weak and hungry, they can be violent, and they can be as ridiculous as we can if, like us, they are clay. But. But. However, they produce something incredible. They give birth to something that may not occur without them and did not exist before them. They are thought’s founders. And since it’s only lying there, I suppose I should add that they are the inventor’s parents. Bad mee backside! Okay, that’s all said and done. Continue.

Creatives denigrate our personal small accomplishments because they are compared to those of the great people. Wonderful video I‘m not Miyazaki, though. That is glory right then. That is brilliance directly from God’s heart. This unsatisfied small factor I created? It essentially fell off the back of the pumpkin trailer. And the carrots weren’t actually new.

Artists is aware that they are at best Salieri. That is what Mozart’s creatives do, also.

I have a creative side. In my hallucinations, my former artistic managers are the ones who judge me because I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 times. They are correct in doing so. When it really matters, my brain goes flat because I am too lazy and complacent. There is no treatment for innovative mania.

I have a creative side. Every project I create has a goal that makes Indiana Jones appear to be a retiree snoring in a balcony head. The more I pursue creativity, the faster I can finish my work, and the longer I brood and circle and gaze blankly before I can finish that job.

I can move ten times more quickly than those who aren’t creative, those who have just been creative for a short while, and those who have only been creative for a short time in their careers. Only that I spend twice as long as they do putting the job of before I work ten times as quickly as they do. When I put my mind to it, I am so confident in my ability to do a wonderful career. I have an addiction to the delay hurry. I’m still so frightened of jumping.

I don’t create anything.

I have a creative side. Never a performer. Though as a boy, I had a dream that I would one day become that. Some of us criticize our abilities and like our own accomplishments because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. That is narcissism, but at least we aren’t in elections.

I have a creative side. Despite my belief in reason and science, my decisions are based on my own senses. and survive in the aftermath of both the triumphs and disasters.

I have a creative side. Every word I’ve said these may irritate other artists who see things differently. Ask a question to two artists, and three thoughts will be formed. Our dispute, our interest in it, and our responsibility to our own wisdom, at least in my opinion, are the proof that we are creative, no matter how we does think about it.

I have a creative side. I lament my lack of taste in the areas of human knowledge that I know quite little, that is to say about everything. And I put my preference before all other things in the areas that are most dear to my soul, or perhaps more precisely, to my passions. Without my passions, I had probably have to spend time staring living in the eye, which almost none of us can do for very long. No seriously. Actually, not. Because living is so difficult to handle when you really look at it.

I have a creative side. I think that when I am gone, some of the good parts of me will stay in the head of at least one additional person, just like a family does.

Working frees me from worrying about my job.

I have a creative side. I fear that my little product will disappear without warning.

I have a creative side. I’m too busy making the next thing to devote too much time to it, especially since practically everything I create did achieve the level of success I conceive of.

I have a creative side. I think there is the greatest secret in the process. I think it is so important that I’m actually foolish enough to publish an essay I wrote into a little machine without having to go through or edit it. I swear I didn’t accomplish this frequently. But I did it right away because I was even more frightened of forgetting what I was saying because I was afraid of you seeing through my sad movements toward the wonderful.

There. I believe I said it correctly.

Humility, a writer’s most important quality, has a great circle to it. What about sincerity, an business manager’s necessary value? Or a doctor’s? Or a teacher’s? They all have fantastic sounds. When humility is our guiding light, the course is usually available for fulfillment, development, relation, and commitment. We’re going to speak about why in this section.

That said, this is a guide for developers, and to that conclusion, I’d like to begin with a story—well, a voyage, actually. It’s a private one, and I’m going to make myself prone as well. I call it:

The Ludicrous Pate of Justin: A Tale

When I was coming out of arts school, a long-haired, goateed novice, write was a known quantity to me, design on the web, however, was riddled with complexities to understand and learn, a problem to be solved. Although I had formal training in typography, layout, and creative design, what piqued my interest was how these traditional skills could be applied to a young online landscape. This style would eventually form the rest of my profession.

But I drained HTML and JavaScript books until the early hours of the morning and self-taught myself how to code during my freshman year rather than student and go into write like many of my friends. I wanted—nay, needed—to better understand the underlying relevance of what my design decisions may think when rendered in a website.

The so-called” Wild West” of website design existed in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Manufacturers at the time were all figuring out how to use layout and visual connection to the online environment. What regulations were in place? How may we break them and also engage, entertain, and present information? How was my values, which include modesty, respect, and connection, coincide with that on a more general level? I was eager to find out.

Even though I’m referring to a different time, those are amazing factors between non-career relationships and the world of layout. What are your main passions, or ideals, that elevate medium? The main elements are all the same, basically the same as what we previously discussed earlier on the immediate parallels between what fulfills you, independent of the visible or online domains.

First within tables, animated GIFs, Flash, then with Web Standards, divs, and CSS, there was personality, raw unbridled creativity, and unique means of presentment that often defied any semblance of a visible grid. Splash screens and “browser requirement” pages aplenty. Usability and accessibility were typically victims of such a creation, but such paramount facets of any digital design were largely (and, in hindsight, unfairly) disregarded at the expense of experimentation.

For instance, this iteration of my personal portfolio site (” the pseudoroom” ) from that time was experimental if not a little overt in terms of visualizing how the idea of a living sketchbook was conveyed. Very skeuomorphic. This one involved sketching and then passing a Photoshop file back and forth to experiment with various user interactions with fellow designer and dear friend Marc Clancy, who is now a co-founder of the creative project organizing app Milanote. Then, I’d break it down and code it into a digital layout.

Along with design folio pieces, the site also offered free downloads for Mac OS customizations: desktop wallpapers that were effectively design experimentation, custom-designed typefaces, and desktop icons.

GUI Galaxy was a design, pixel art, and Mac-centric news portal that graphic designer friends and I developed from the beginning.

Design news portals were incredibly popular at the time, and they now accept Tweet-sized, small-format versions of relevant news from the categories I previously covered. If you took Twitter, curated it to a few categories, and wrapped it in a custom-branded experience, you’d have a design news portal from the late 90s / early 2000s.

We had evolved into a bandwidth-sensitive, award-winning, much more accessibility-conscious website using web standards. Still ripe with experimentation, yet more mindful of equitable engagement. There are a few content panes here, with both Mac-focused news and general news (tech, design ) to be seen. We also offered many of the custom downloads I cited before as present on my folio site but branded and themed to GUI Galaxy.

The presentation layer consists of international design, illustration, and news author collaboration, and the backbone of the website was a homegrown CMS. And the collaboration effort here, in addition to experimentation on a’ brand’ and content delivery, was hitting my core. We were creating a larger-than-anyone experience and establishing a global audience.

Collaboration and connection transcend medium in their impact, immensely fulfilling me as a designer.

Why am I going down this design memory lane with you, now? Two reasons.

First, there’s a reason for the nostalgia for that design era ( the” Wild West” era, as I put it ): the inherent exploration, personality, and creativity that dominated many design portals and personal portfolio websites. Ultra-finely detailed pixel art UI, custom illustration, bespoke vector graphics, all underpinned by a strong design community.

The web design industry has been in a state of stagnation right now. I suspect there’s a strong chance you’ve seen a site whose structure looks something like this: a hero image / banner with text overlaid, perhaps with a lovely rotating carousel of images ( laying the snark on heavy there ), a call to action, and three columns of sub-content directly beneath. Perhaps there are selections that vaguely relate to their respective content in an icon library.

Design, as it’s applied to the digital landscape, is in dire need of thoughtful layout, typography, and visual engagement that goes hand-in-hand with all the modern considerations we now know are paramount: usability. accessibility. Load times and bandwidth- sensitive content delivery. A user-friendly presentation that connects with people wherever they are. We must be mindful of, and respectful toward, those concerns—but not at the expense of creativity of visual communication or via replicating cookie-cutter layouts.

Pixel Issues

Websites during this period were often designed and built on Macs whose OS and desktops looked something like this. Although Mac OS 7.5 is available, 8 and 9 are not very different.

How could any single icon, at any given moment, stand out and grab my attention? That is a fascinating question. In this example, the user’s desktop is tidy, but think of a more realistic example with icon pandemonium. Or, let’s say an icon was a part of a larger system grouping ( fonts, extensions, control panels ): how did it maintain cohesion within a group as well?

These were 32 x 32 pixel creations, utilizing a 256-color palette, designed pixel-by-pixel as mini mosaics. This seemed to me to be the embodiment of digital visual communication under such absurd restrictions. And often, ridiculous restrictions can yield the purification of concept and theme.

So I started doing my homework and conducting my research. I was a student of this new medium, hungry to dissect, process, discover, and make it my own.

I wanted to see how I could use that 256-color palette to push the boundaries of a 32×32 pixel grid, expanding upon the idea of exploration. Those ridiculous constraints forced a clarity of concept and presentation that I found incredibly appealing. I was thrown the digital gauntlet, and that challenge fueled my determination. And so, in my dorm room into the wee hours of the morning, I toiled away, bringing conceptual sketches into mini mosaic fruition.

These are some of my creations that made use of ResEdit, the only program I had at the time, to create icons. ResEdit was a clunky, built-in Mac OS utility not really made for exactly what we were using it for. Research is at the center of all of this endeavor. Challenge. Problem-solving Again, these core connection-based values are agnostic of medium.

There’s one more design portal I want to talk about, which also serves as the second reason for my story to bring this all together.

Kaliber 1000 is short for K10k. K10k was founded in 1998 by Michael Schmidt and Toke Nygaard, and was the design news portal on the web during this period. With its pixel art-fueled presentation, attention to detail paid to every aspect of every detail, and many of the more well-known designers of the time who were invited to be news authors on the site, well… it was the place to be, my friend. With respect where respect is due, GUI Galaxy’s concept was inspired by what these folks were doing.

For my part, the combination of my web design work and pixel art exploration began to get me some notoriety in the design scene. K10k eventually added me as one of their very select group of news writers to the website’s content.

Amongst my personal work and side projects —and now with this inclusion—in the design community, this put me on the map. Additionally, my design work has started to appear on other design news portals, as well as be published in various printed collections, in domestic and international magazines, and in various printed collections. With that degree of success while in my early twenties, something else happened:

I actually changed into a colossal asshole in about a year of school, not less. The press and the praise became what fulfilled me, and they went straight to my head. My ego was inflated by them. I actually felt somewhat superior to my fellow designers.

The casualties? My design stagnated. My evolution has stagnated, as is my evolution.

I felt so supremely confident in my abilities that I effectively stopped researching and discovering. When my first instinct was to sketch concepts or iterate ideas in lead, I instead leaped right into Photoshop. I drew my inspiration from the smallest of sources ( and with blinders on ). Any criticism of my work from my fellow students was frequently vehemently dissented. The most tragic loss: I had lost touch with my values.

My ego almost destroyed some of my friendships and blossoming professional relationships. I was toxic in talking about design and in collaboration. But thankfully, candor was a gift from those same friends. They called me out on my unhealthy behavior.

It’s true, I initially didn’t accept it, but after much reflection, I was able to accept it. I was soon able to accept, and process, and course correct. Although the realization made me feel uneasy, the re-awakening was necessary. I let go of the “reward” of adulation and re-centered upon what stoked the fire for me in art school. Most importantly, I returned to my fundamental values.

Always Students

Following that temporary regression, I was able to advance in both my personal and professional design. And I could self-reflect as I got older to facilitate further growth and course correction as needed.

Let’s use the Large Hadron Collider as an example. The LHC was designed” to help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity”. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Around fifteen years ago, in one of my earlier professional roles, I designed the interface for the application that generated the LHC’s particle collision diagrams. These diagrams are often regarded as works of art by themselves because they depict what is actually happening inside the Collider during any given particle collision event.

Designing the interface for this application was a fascinating process for me, in that I worked with Fermilab physicists to understand what the application was trying to achieve, but also how the physicists themselves would be using it. In order to accomplish this, in this role,

I cut my teeth on usability testing, working with the Fermilab team to iterate and improve the interface. To me, how they spoke and what they talked about was like an alien tongue. And by making myself humble and working under the mindset that I was but a student, I made myself available to be a part of their world to generate that vital connection.

I also had my first ethnographic observational experience, where I observed how the physicists used the tool in their own environments, on their own terminals. For example, one takeaway was that due to the level of ambient light-driven contrast within the facility, the data columns ended up using white text on a dark gray background instead of black text-on-white. They were able to focus on their eyes while working during the day while poring over enormous amounts of data. And Fermilab and CERN are government entities with rigorous accessibility standards, so my knowledge in that realm also grew. Another crucial form of connection was the barrier-free design.

So to those core drivers of my visual problem-solving soul and ultimate fulfillment: discovery, exposure to new media, observation, human connection, and evolution. I checked my ego before entering those values, which opened the door for those values.

An evergreen willingness to listen, learn, understand, grow, evolve, and connect yields our best work. I want to pay attention to the words “grow” and “evolve” in particular in that statement. If we are always students of our craft, we are also continually making ourselves available to evolve. Yes, we have years of practical design experience under our belt. Or the focused lab sessions from a UX bootcamp. Or the monogrammed portfolio of our work. Or, ultimately, decades of a career behind us.

However, remember that “experience” does not equate to “expert.”

As soon as we close our minds via an inner monologue of’ knowing it all’ or branding ourselves a” #thoughtleader” on social media, the designer we are is our final form. There will never be a designer like us.

How to Outrank Big Competitors in Search written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Sam Dunning In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Sam Dunning, founder of Breaking B2B, an SEO firm specializing in SEO for revenue—not vanity metrics. Sam shares his insights on how small businesses can compete with industry giants in Google rankings by focusing on B2B […]

How to Outrank Big Competitors in Search written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Sam Dunning

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Sam Dunning, founder of Breaking B2B, an SEO firm specializing in SEO for revenue—not vanity metrics. Sam shares his insights on how small businesses can compete with industry giants in Google rankings by focusing on B2B SEO strategies that drive organic traffic and real conversions.

We discuss the dangers of falling into the “traffic trap”, where businesses chase high-volume keywords that don’t convert, and instead explore long-tail SEO tactics, strategic keyword research, and the role of AI in SEO. Sam also shares practical techniques for competitor SEO analysis, leveraging on-page and off-page SEO, and adapting to Google search updates to maintain visibility.

If you’re tired of seeing competitors outrank you in search, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help your business dominate Google rankings and drive revenue.

Chapters:

• [00:09] Introducing Sam Dunning
• [00:31] Approach to SEO Strategy
• [03:42] SEO Isn’t for Every Business
• [06:21] SEO is a Long-term Game
• [08:53] Your Marketing Niche
• [13:00] Google Search vs AI Search
• [15:24] SEO and Local Search
• [18:46] Where to Start with SEO

More About Sam Dunning: 

Check out Sam Dunning’s Website
Connect with Sam Dunning on LinkedIn

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by

Want to elevate your marketing game? AdCritter pairs Connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting to drive real results. Discover how their full-funnel strategy can help your business grow smarter. Let them know Duct Tape Marketing sent you, and you’ll get a dollar-for-dollar match on your first campaign! Learn more at adcritter.com.

prom and other occasions are more associated with the teenage British experience. And the movie business has not forgotten that point, God help it. In the high school subgenre, prom movies are a dime a dozen, with everything from the sweet ( Never Been Kissed ) to the upbeat ( Footloose ) to the downright Shakespearean ( Two Things I]…] […]

Slanted Is The Substance for Prom Season, the success of the SXSW Grand Jury, first appeared on Den of Geek.

A dark triangle floats over Bolton, England, a silver orb cruises over Sarasota, Florida, and a number of luminous orbs that obscure Danville, Illinois. I am unable to reveal these are just a few of the intriguing films that witnesses have submitted as Creatures in 2024. &nbsp,

In 2024, there were many reports of UFO sightings, but were there any real ones? And who even gathers and examines UFO accounts? I do, along with my Enigma Labs acquaintances. For decades, I’ve written about sci-fi, knowledge, and Creatures for Den of Geek, but recently I’ve also worked as a consultant for Enigma Labs, a company that has created an app to gather information and form a network to discuss the observations in order to sort of crowdsource the research.

Here are the top 5 UFO movies that were recently included in my top five list from Enigma from 2024.

5. Enigma# 303251

Bolton, England
Date/Time: 2024 November 14 • 5:05:00 PM GMT
Link to report and video:

This strange film from Bolton, England, is coming in at number five. We want to look for something besides helicopters when analyzing these films, such as birds, bubbles, SpaceX missiles, stars, planets, and balloons, to name a few. Unidentified Flying Objects ( UFOs ) and more technically sophisticated Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena ( UAP ) are the exceptions when we can’t compare it to something we know. Unknown is the key phrase. UAP is defined as something that is not immediately recognizable by Congress. It simply means we aren’t sure what it is; it doesn’t mean it’s aliens. Additionally, it makes it possible for one person to explain a UAP to another. Some of the videos in this article may be simple to identify. If that’s the case, please let us know.

There were” thee black objects slowly moving, the last one appearing to be triangular with a dim light in]the ] middle,” according to the witness in this report. The third black object, according to him,” suddenly disappeared” when he tried to capture it.

The object appears very dim against the clouds in the video, which is dusk. Two videos of a dark object moving very high among the clouds were submitted. The objects don’t move very quickly, so it’s possible they’re balloons floating in the wind, but they definitely look odd. Even more odd is that three people disappeared and one was there.

4. Enigma# 295340

Location: Florida’s Sarasota
Date/Time: 2024 July 1 • 11:55:40 AM EDT
Report and digital website

Thankfully, this is a daytime sighting. Random lights at night can be mistaken for something strange, but daytime objects can be seen better, so difficult-to-explain videos taken during the day are more uncommon. In this situation, the objects appear to be a round, metallic orb. Although it could be a balloon, it is moving quickly. Strong winds, which are what would propel a balloon through the sky, do not appear to be blowing the palm trees. Additionally, it appears to be made of metal.

The witness claimed in the report that” something made out of metal appeared out of nowhere.” ” And vanished as quickly as possible.”

The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office ( AARO ) has also reported cases of metallic orbs that they are unable to explain, which makes this sighting even more intriguing.

3. Enigma# 288257

Location: Hoquiam, Washington, Grays Harbor,
Date/Time: 2024 February 5 • 10:32:00 PM PST
Link to report and video:

Although this is another nighttime video, the moving thing is strange enough to be deemed odd. It’s thought that a cobweb flapping in the wind near the camera, which is reflecting a light, may be the cause of this strange light. No cobwebs can be seen, though. This could be ball lightning because it is also a stormy night. Ball lightning has not been proven to exist, but numerous witnesses have reported ball-like phenomena that appear during thunderstorms that meander around for a few seconds before disappearing. Perhaps this kind of video can demonstrate that the search for UFOs can lead to new discoveries for the scientific community through studies like ball lightning.

2. Enigma# 299139

Location: Danville, Illinois
Date/Time: 2024 September 10 • 3:49:00 PM CDT
Link to report and video:

The strangeness is still present in this nighttime video, but this time it’s not.

The witness claims that she and my wife were sitting on the porch. And my wife noticed a brilliant light in the sky. Then I looked over and discovered [sic ]”.

The witness claimed that the witness initially assumed the star to be a bright star before it started multiplying. In the full video, it grows and expands, becoming an ever-growing glob of luminescent orbs.

1. Enigma# 308042

Location: Canada’s Belle River, Ontario
Date/Time: 2024 August 24 • 8:24:00 PM EDT
Report and digital website

A daytime video has to be the year’s number one, and this one does just that. It was captured in Belle River, Ontario, Canada, on August 24, 2024. A young woman, her father, and their dog are the witnesses in the video. The actual object is very odd. &nbsp,

The witness claims in the report that he was” sitting in the backyard with wife and daughter when my daughter spotted the UAP just east of our location.” He continued,” I told her to get out her phone and record it, which she did.”

We don’t know what caught their attention first because the description is so succinct. The object is very bright at the beginning of the video, especially given how bright it is outside. Most flying objects move in a straight line, and the majority of the lights in the sky stay lit until either one turns on or off. This object accelerates, slows down, stops, dims, vanishes, and reappears, but there is no longer any visible object left behind. All of this is strange behavior that is unusual for objects that fly in the sky. This is why this video, which is made of Canada of all places, is the best Enigma UFO ( UAP ) video of the year.

Watch the entire Top 10 UFO series here. This was Enigma’s first full year of gathering reports, and as time goes on, the reports are getting more quickly. Every week, we receive hundreds. The Enigma app, which will soon be available for Android, offers a free access to all of the videos posted on it. If you come across any reports that are even better than these, let us know.

The most bizarre user-posted UFO videos from 2024 first appeared on Den of Geek.

In the field where the title character second reveals her signature colors, Disney’s Snow White remake is both the picture that it is and the one it so plainly wants to become. Rachel Zegler is finally encased in the red, orange, and white ruffles on a sunset-drenched hills far from the house.

The film Is No, Rachel Zegler, and Snow White Review first appeared on Den of Geek.

A dark triangle floats over Bolton, England, a silver orb cruises over Sarasota, Florida, and several other luminous orbs that obscure Danville, Illinois. I am unable to reveal these just a few of the intriguing films that witnesses have submitted as Creatures in 2024. &nbsp,

In 2024, there were many reports of UFO sightings, but were there any real ones? And who even gathers and examines UFO accounts? Together with my Enigma Labs associates, I do. For decades, I’ve written about sci-fi, knowledge, and Creatures for Den of Geek, but recently I’ve also worked as a consultant for Enigma Labs, a company that has created an app to gather information and form a network to discuss the observations in order to sort of crowdsource the research.

I recently came up with the top five lists for the top 2024 UFO videos submitted to Enigma, and I’ve included the top 5.

5. Enigma# 303251

Location: Bolton, England
Date/Time: 2024 November 14 • 5:05:00 PM GMT
Link to report and video:

This strange video from Bolton, England, is coming in at number five. We want to analyze these videos for anything that might not exist, like airplanes, balloons, SpaceX rockets, stars, planets, or birds, to name a few examples. Unidentified Flying Objects ( UFOs ) and more technically sophisticated Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena ( UAP ) are the exceptions when we can’t compare it to something we know. The most important word is “unidentified.” UAP is defined by Congress as something that cannot be immediately identified. It simply means we are not sure what it is. It doesn’t mean it is aliens. Additionally, it makes it possible for one person to explain a UAP to another. Some of the videos in this article might be able to be spotted easily. If so, please let us know.

According to the witness, there were” thee black objects slowly moving, the last one appearing to be triangular with a dim light in]the ] middle.” He claims that he attempted to capture the third black object, but it” suddenly vanished.”

The object appears very dim against the clouds in the video because it is dusk. Two videos of a dark object moving very high among the clouds were submitted. The objects don’t move very quickly, so it’s possible they’re balloons floating in the wind, but they definitely look odd. Even more odd is that three people disappeared and one was there.

4. Enigma# 295340

Location: Sarasota, Florida
Date/Time: 2024 July 1 • 11:55:40 AM EDT
Report and video link

Thankfully, this is a daytime sighting. Daytime objects can be seen better than random lights at night, so it’s harder to understand the rarer videos captured during the day. In this situation, the objects appear to be a round, metallic orb. Although it could be a balloon, it is moving quickly. The palm trees do not appear to be blown by strong winds, which would propel a balloon through the sky so quickly. Additionally, it appears to be made of metal.

The witness claimed in the report that” something made out of metal appeared out of nowhere.” ” And vanished as quickly as possible.”

The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office ( AARO ) has also had cases of metallic orbs that they can’t explain, which makes this sighting even more intriguing.

3. Enigma# 288257

Location: Hoquiam, Washington, Grays Harbor,
Date/Time: 2024 February 5 • 10:32:00 PM PST
Link to report and video:

Although this is another nighttime video, the moving thing is strange enough to be deemed odd. It’s thought that a cobweb flapping in the wind near the camera, which is reflecting a light, may be the cause of this strange light. No cobwebs can be seen, though. This could also be ball lightning because it is also a stormy night. Although it has not been proven that there is ball lightning, numerous witnesses have reported seeing ball-like light during thunderstorms that appear, meander around for a few seconds, then vanish. Perhaps videos like this can aid the scientific community in making new discoveries, such as ball lightning, which demonstrate that the search for UFOs can help the scientific community make new discoveries.

2. Enigma# 299139

Location: Danville, Illinois
Date/Time: 2024 September 10 • 3:49:00 PM CDT
Link to report and video:

The strangeness is still present in this nighttime video, but this time it’s not.

The witness claims that” Me and my wife were sitting on the porch.” And my wife noticed a brilliant light in the sky. Then I looked over and discovered [sic ]”.

The witness claimed that the witness initially assumed the star to be a bright star before it started multiplying. In the full video, it keeps multiplying, forming an ever-growing glob of luminescent orbs.

1. Enigma# 308042

Location: Canada’s Belle River, Ontario
Date/Time: 2024 August 24 • 8:24:00 PM EDT
Report and video link

A daytime video has to be the year’s number one, and this one does just that. In Belle River, Ontario, Canada, on August 24, 2024, it was captured. You can hear the witnesses in the video being a young woman, her father, and their dog. The particular object is very odd. &nbsp,

The witness claims in the report that he was” sitting in the backyard with my wife and daughter when she noticed the UAP just east of our location.” He continued,” I advised her to take her phone out and record it,” which she did.

We don’t know what caught their attention first because the description is so succinct. The object is very bright at the beginning of the video, especially given how bright it is outside. Most flying objects move in a straight line, and the majority of the lights in the sky stay lit until either one turns on or off. This object accelerates, slows down, stops, dims, vanishes, and reappears, but there is no longer any visible object left behind. All of this is strange behavior that is not typical for flying objects in the sky. This video, which is made entirely out of Canada, is the best Enigma UFO ( UAP ) video of the year.

Watch the top 10 UFO movies in full here. As the year progresses, reports for Enigma will be collected for the first time in a full year, and they are getting more quickly as time goes on. Every week, we receive hundreds. The Enigma app, which will soon be available for Android, offers a free access to all of the videos posted on it. If you come across any reports that are even better than these, let us know.

The most bizarre user-posted UFO videos of 2024 first appeared on Den of Geek.

Episode 4 of Daredevil: Born Again season 4 contains clues in this post. The fourth episode of Daredevil: Born Again features something that feels less like a superhero comic book and more like a gritty 2000s torture porn movie right before the closing credits of” Sic Semper Systema” ( previously the opening credits of the first and fourth episodes ). a veiled figure […]

The blog Daredevil: Born Again’s Muse Is the Best Villain first appeared on Den of Geek.

A dark triangle floats over Bolton, England, a silver orb cruises over Sarasota, Florida, and a number of glowing orbs that obscure Danville, Illinois. I am unable to reveal just a few of the intriguing videos that witnesses have submitted as UFOs in 2024. &nbsp,

In 2024, there were many reports of UFO sightings, but were there any real ones? Who also looks at and collects information of UFOs? Together with my Enigma Labs acquaintances, I do. For years, I have written about sci-fi, knowledge, and UFOs for Den of Geek, but recently I’ve also worked as a specialist for Enigma Labs, a company that has developed an app to gather UFO reports and to form a network to discuss the sightings in order to sort of crowdsource the research.

Here are the top 5 UFO movies that were recently included in my top five list from Enigma from 2024.

5. Enigma# 303251

Site: Bolton, England
Date/Time: 2024 November 14 • 5:05:00 PM GMT
Link to report and video:

This strange film from Bolton, England, is at number five. We want to appear for something besides helicopters when analyzing these films, such as birds, bubbles, SpaceX missiles, stars, planets, and balloons, to name a few. When we can’t match it up with something we know, it’s an Unknown Flying Object ( UFO ) or the more technically sophisticated Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena ( UAP ). Unknown is the key phrase in this context. UAP is defined by Congress as something that cannot be quickly identified. It simply means we aren’t sure what it is; it doesn’t think it’s creatures. Additionally, it means that a UAP can become explained clearly to someone else. Some of the video in this article may be simple to spot. Tell us if that’s the case.

According to the witness, there were” thee black objects slowly moving, the last one appearing to be triangular with a dim light in]the ] middle.” The next black object, according to him,” immediately disappeared” when he tried to capture it.

The thing appears very dim against the clouds in the movie, which is dusk. Two video of a black object moving quite high among the clouds were submitted. The things don’t walk particularly quickly, so they might just be balloons swaying in the wind. Even more peculiar is that three people were present and one disappeared.

4. Enigma# 295340

Site: Sarasota, Florida
Date/Time: 2024 July 1 • 11:55:40 AM EDT
Report and picture website

Thankfully, this incident occurs during the day. Daytime materials can be seen better than strange lights at night, so it’s harder to understand the rarer movies captured during the day. The objects in this situation appear to be a square, silver ball. It might be a bubble, too, but it is moving quickly. The palm trees appear to be blown out of the sky by strong winds, which would propel a bubble so swiftly through the clouds. Additionally, it appears to be made of metal.

The witness claimed in the document that” something made out of steel appeared out of nowhere.” ” And vanished as quickly as possible.”

The fact that the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office ( AARO ) has also had cases of metallic orbs they can’t explain makes this metallic orb sighting even more intriguing.

3. Enigma# 288257

Site: Hoquiam, Washington, Grays Harbor
Date/Time: 2024 February 5 • 10:32:00 PM PST
Link to report and video:

Although this is another overnight videos, the moving thing is strange enough to be deemed odd. This strange light, according to some, could be the result of a web sputtering in the wind that is reflected by the camera. No dust are, nevertheless, visible. This could be ball thunder because it is also a rainy night. Ball thunder has not been proven to exist, but numerous witnesses have reported appearing in thunderstorms, meandering around for a few moments, before vanishing. Perhaps this kind of video you demonstrate that the search for UFOs can lead to new discoveries for the medical community through studies like ball lightning.

2. Enigma# 299139

Danville, Illinois: Where is it located?
Date/Time: 2024 September 10 • 3:49:00 PM CDT
Link to report and video:

The strangeness is still present in this nighttime movie, but this time it’s not.

The testimony claims that she and my family were sitting on the porch. And my woman noticed a brilliant light in the sky. Then I looked over and discovered [sic ]”.

The witness claimed that they initially believed it to be a brilliant star before it started multiplying. In the whole movie, it keeps multiplying, forming an ever-growing glob of luminescent orbs.

1. Enigma# 308042

Site: Canada’s Belle River, Ontario
Date/Time: 2024 August 24 • 8:24:00 PM EDT
Report and picture website

The best daylight picture of the year has to be one, and this one does just that. In Belle River, Ontario, Canada, on August 24, 2024, it was captured. You may hear a young girl, her father, and their dog as they are all heard in the picture. The particular subject is really odd. &nbsp,

The witness claims in the statement that he and his wife and daughter spotted the UAP” only south of our site” while sitting in the garden. He continued,” I advised her to take her cellphone up and record it,” which she did.

We don’t understand what caught their attention first because the information is so succinct. The subject is very beautiful at the beginning of the picture, particularly given how beautiful it is outside. Most flying objects move in a direct line, and the majority of the lights in the sky stay lit until either one turns on or off. This item accelerates, slows down, stops, dims, vanishes, and reappears, but there is no longer any apparent object left behind. All of this is strange behavior that is not common for flying objects in the sky. This video, which is made entirely of Canada, is the best Enigma UFO ( UAP ) video of the year, for this reason.

See the top 10 UFO movies in full here. As the year progresses, reports for Enigma will be collected for the first time in a whole year, and they are getting more rapidly as time goes on. We receive hundreds each month. The Enigma application, which will soon be available for Android, offers a free access to all of the videos posted on it. If you come across any information that are even better than these, let us know.

The most bizarre user-posted UFO video from 2024 first appeared on Den of Geek.

A silver orb cruises over Sarasota, Florida, a dark triangle that hovers over Bolton, England, and a number of luminous lights that form a strange puddle over Danville, Illinois. I am unable to reveal these just a few of the intriguing films that witnesses have submitted as Creatures in 2024. There was a]… ]

The most bizarre user-posted UFO clips of 2024 first appeared on Den of Geek.

A dark triangle floats over Bolton, England, a silver orb cruises over Sarasota, Florida, and several other luminescent orbs that obscure Danville, Illinois. I am unable to reveal these just a few of the intriguing films that witnesses have submitted as Creatures in 2024. &nbsp,

In 2024, there were many reports of UFO sightings, but were there any real ones? And who even gathers and examines UFO accounts? I do, along with my Enigma Labs associates. For years, I have written about sci-fi, knowledge, and Creatures for Den of Geek, but recently I’ve also worked as a specialist for Enigma Labs, a organization that has created an app to gather UFO reports and to form a network to discuss the occurrences in order to sort of crowdsource the research.

I recently came up with the top five lists for the major 2024 UFO video submitted to Enigma, and I’ve included the top 5.

5. Enigma# 303251

Site: Bolton, England
Date/Time: 2024 November 14 • 5:05:00 PM GMT
Link to report and video:

This strange film from Bolton, England, is at number five. When analysing these films, we want to look for something besides airplanes and birds, balloons, SpaceX rockets, stars, planets, and other such things. When we can’t match it up with something we know, it’s an Unknown Flying Object ( UFO ) or the more technically sophisticated Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena ( UAP ). The most important term is “unidentified.” UAP is defined by Congress as something that is not instantly recognizable. It simply means that we are unsure of what it is, not because it is alien. Additionally, it makes it possible for one individual to explain a UAP to another. Some of the video in this article may be simple to identify. Tell us if that’s the case.

There were” thee black objects slowly moving, the last one seemed triangular with a dim light in [the ] middle,” the witness claims in this report. He claims that he attempted to capture the next black object, but it” immediately disappeared.”

The image appears very dim against the clouds in the video, which is dusk. Two videos of a black object moving quite high among the clouds were submitted. The things don’t move very quickly, so it’s possible they’re balloons floating in the weather, but they definitely look strange. Even more strange is that three people disappeared and one was it.

4. Enigma# 295340

Site: Florida’s Sarasota
Date/Time: 2024 July 1 • 11:55:40 AM EDT
Report and digital website

Thankfully, this incident occurs during the day. Random lights at night can be mistaken for something strange, but daylight objects can be seen much, but difficult-to-explain videos taken during the day are more uncommon. The objects in this situation appear to be a square, silver orb. Although it could be a bubble, it is moving quickly. The palm branches do not appear to be blown by strong winds, which may propel a balloon through the clouds so fast. Additionally, it appears to be made of metal.

The witness claimed in the document that” something made out of steel appeared out of nowhere.” ” And vanished as quickly as possible.”

The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office ( AARO ) has also reported cases of metallic orbs that they are unable to explain, which makes this sighting even more intriguing.

3. Enigma# 288257

Site: Hoquiam, Washington, Grays Harbor,
Date/Time: 2024 February 5 • 10:32:00 PM PST
Link to report and video:

Although this is a different daytime film, the moving thing is strange enough to be deemed strange. This strange light, according to some, could be the result of a web sputtering in the weather that is reflected by the camera. No dust can be seen, though. This could also be game thunder because it is also a rainy night. Ball lightening has not been proven to exist, but numerous witnesses have reported ball-like phenomena that appear during thunderstorms that walk around for a few seconds before disappearing. Perhaps this kind of video you demonstrate that the search for UFOs can lead to new discoveries for the medical society through studies like ball lightning.

2. Enigma# 299139

Site: Danville, Illinois
Date/Time: 2024 September 10 • 3:49:00 PM CDT
Link to report and video:

This is yet another nighttime picture, but once more the weirdness is clearly visible.

The witness claims that she and my family were sitting on the porch. And my woman noticed a brilliant light in the sky. Then I looked over and discovered [sic ]”.

The witness claimed that the witness initially believed it to be a brilliant sun before it started multiplying. In the whole video, it keeps multiplying, forming an ever-growing glob of glowing orbs.

1. Enigma# 308042

Site: Canada’s Belle River, Ontario
Date/Time: 2024 August 24 • 8:24:00 PM EDT
Report and digital website

A nighttime movie has to be the year’s number one, and this one does just that. It was captured in Belle River, Ontario, Canada on August 24, 2024. You can learn the witnesses in the film being a young girl, her papa, and their dog. The actual object is really odd. &nbsp,

The witness claims in the statement that he was” sitting in the yard with wife and daughter when my daughter spotted the UAP just south of our place.” He continued,” I told her to get out her phone and record it, which she did.”

We don’t know what caught their attention second because the information is simple. The subject is very beautiful at the beginning of the picture, particularly given how beautiful it is outside. Most objects flying in a direct line move in a straight line, and the majority of the lights in the sky stay lit until either one turns on or off. There is no obvious subject left when this object disappears, just as it does when it slows down, stops, dims, disappears, and reappears. All of this is strange behavior that is not normal for flying objects in the sky. This video, which is made entirely out of Canada, is the best Enigma UFO ( UAP ) video of the year.

See the top 10 UFO movies in full here. As the year progresses, reports for Enigma will be collected for the first time in a whole year, and they are getting more rapidly as time goes on. We receive hundreds each month. The Enigma software, which will soon be available for Android, offers free access to all of the videos posted on it. If you come across any accounts that are even better than these, let us know.

The most bizarre user-posted UFO clips of 2024 first appeared on Den of Geek.

We agree: the computer-generated heads could be a great fit for personas—but not for the purpose you might think. Ironically, the website highlights the core issue of this very common design method: the person ( a ) does not exist. Personas are deliberately created, just like in the photos. Knowledge is taken out of natural environment and recombined into an isolated preview that’s detached from reality.

However, oddly enough, developers use personalities to inform their designs for the real world.

Personas: A action up

Most manufacturers have created, used, or come across personalities at least once in their profession. The Interaction Design Foundation defines profile as “fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the various consumer types that might use your company, product, page, or brand” in their article” Personas- A Simple Introduction.” In their most complete expression, personas typically consist of a name, profile picture, quotes, demographics, goals, needs, behavior in relation to a certain service/product, emotions, and motivations ( for example, see Creative Companion’s Persona Core Poster ). According to design firm Designit, the goal of personas is to “make the research relateable, ]and ] easy to communicate, digest, reference, and apply to product and service development.”

The decontextualization of identities

Personas are common because they make “dry” research information more realistic, more people. However, this approach places a cap on the study’s data research, making it impossible for the investigated users to be excluded from their particular contexts. As a result, personalities don’t describe important factors that make you realize their decision-making method or allow you to connect to users ‘ thoughts and behavior, they lack stories. You are aware of the persona’s actions, but you lack the knowledge to know why. You end up with images of people that are really less people.

This “decontextualization” we see in identities happens in four way, which we’ll discuss below.

People are assumed to be stable, according to individuals.

Although many companies still try to box in their employees and customers with outdated personality tests ( referring to you, Myers-Briggs ), here’s a painfully obvious truth: people are not a fixed set of features. Depending on how you feel, how you act, think, and experience, you go about doing things. You appear distinct to different people, you may act helpful to some, tough to others. And you change your mind all the time about selections you’ve taken.

Current psychologists concur that while individuals typically act in accordance with specific patterns, how people act and make decisions is ultimately influenced by a combination of history and culture. The context—the atmosphere, the effect of other people, your feelings, the whole story that led up to a situation—determines the kind of person you are in each particular time.

Personalities do not account for this variation in their attempt to improve reality; instead, they present a consumer as a predetermined set of features. Like character testing, personas seize people away from real life. Even worse, individuals are reduced to a brand and categorized as” that kind of guy” with no means to practice their inherent flexibility. This behavior discredits variety, perpetuates stereotypes, and doesn’t indicate reality.

Personas rely on people, not the environment

You’re designing for a perspective, not an individual, in the real world. Each individual lives in a community, a group, an habitat, where there are environmental, social, and cultural factors you need to consider. A pattern is not meant for a single customer. Instead, you create a style for one or more specific situations where a large number of individuals may use that product. Personas, yet, show the customer alone rather than define how the consumer relates to the environment.

Would you choose the exact course of action over and over again? Maybe you’re a dedicated vegan but also decide to buy some meats when your family are coming across. As they depend on various situations and characteristics, your decisions—and behavior, thoughts, and comments —are no absolute but extremely contextual. Because it doesn’t explain the circumstances under which you make your decisions, the persona that “represents” you doesn’t take into account this interdependence. It doesn’t provide a explanation of why you act the way you do. People practice the well-known attribution error, which states that they too often attribute others ‘ behavior to their personalities and not to the circumstances.

As mentioned by the Interaction Design Foundation, identities are often placed in a situation that’s a” specific environment with a problem they want to or have to solve “—does that mean environment actually is considered? However, what frequently happens is that you take a hypothetical figure and based on that fiction decide how this personality may deal with a particular situation. How could you possibly comprehend how someone you want to represent behave in new circumstances given that you haven’t even fully investigated and understood the current context of the people you want to represent?

Personas are meaningless averages

A persona is depicted as a specific person in Shlomo Goltz’s introduction to Smashing Magazine, according to Shlomo Goltz’s introduction article. It is instead made up of observations from numerous people. A well-known critique to this aspect of personas is that the average person does not exist, as per the famous example of the USA Air Force designing planes based on the average of 140 of their pilots ‘ physical dimensions and not a single pilot actually fitting within that average seat.

The same limitation applies to mental aspects of people. Have you ever heard a famous person say something like,” They took what I said out of context!” They used my words, but I didn’t mean it like that”. The celebrity’s statement was literally reported, but the reporter failed to explain the context and how the non-verbal expressions were used. As a result, the intended meaning was lost. You do the same when you create personas: you collect somebody’s statement ( or goal, or need, or emotion ), of which the meaning can only be understood if you provide its own specific context, yet report it as an isolated finding.

However, personas go one step further, combining a decontextualized finding with another decontextualized finding from another. The resulting set of findings often does not make sense: it’s unclear, or even contrasting, because it lacks the underlying reasons on why and how that finding has arisen. It lacks any significance. And the persona doesn’t give you the full background of the person ( s ) to uncover this meaning: you would need to dive into the raw data for each single persona item to find it. What, then, is the usefulness of the persona?

The validity of personas can be deceiving.

To a certain extent, designers realize that a persona is a lifeless average. Designers create “relatable” personas to make them appear like real people in order to overcome this. Nothing captures the absurdity of this better than a sentence by the Interaction Design Foundation:” Add a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character”. In other words, you add non-realism in an attempt to create more realism. Wouldn’t it be much more responsible to emphasize that John is only an abstraction if you purposefully conceal the fact that” John Doe” is an abstract representation of research findings? If something is artificial, let’s present it as such.

After accepting that people’s personalities are fixed, ignored the importance of their environment, and hidden meaning by joining isolated, non-generalizable findings, designers create new context to create ( their own ) meaning. In doing so, as with everything they create, they introduce a host of biases. As phrased by Designit, as designers we can” contextualize]the persona ] based on our reality and experience. We make connections that are well-known to us. This practice reinforces stereotypes, doesn’t reflect real-world diversity, and gets further away from people’s actual reality with every detail added.

Everyone should use their own empathy and develop their own interpretation and emotional response if we want to conduct good design research by reporting the reality “as-is” and making it relatable for our audience.

Dynamic Selves: The alternative to personas

If we shouldn’t use personas, what should we do instead?

Designit suggested utilizing mindsets rather than personas. Each Mindset is a” spectrum of attitudes and emotional responses that different people have within the same context or life experience”. It challenges designers to avoid becoming fixated on just one person’s way of being. Unfortunately, while being a step in the right direction, this proposal doesn’t take into account that people are part of an environment that determines their personality, their behavior, and, yes, their mindset. Therefore, Mindsets are also not absolute but change in regard to the situation. What determines a particular Mindset, remains to be seen.

Another alternative comes from Margaret P., author of the article” Kill Your Personas“, who has argued for replacing personas with persona spectrums that consist of a range of user abilities. For instance, a visual impairment could be permanent ( blindness ), temporary ( recovery from eye surgery ), or situational (screen glare ). Persona spectrums are highly useful for more inclusive and context-based design, as they’re based on the understanding that the context is the pattern, not the personality. Their limitation, however, is that they have a very functional take on users that misses the relatability of a real person taken from within a spectrum.

We want to change the traditional design process to be context-based by creating a persona substitute. Contexts are generalizable and have patterns that we can identify, just like we tried to do previously with people. How can we identify these patterns, then? How do we ensure truly context-based design?

Understand real individuals in multiple contexts

Nothing can be more relatable and inspiring than reality. Therefore, we have to understand real individuals in their multi-faceted contexts, and use this understanding to fuel our design. This approach is known as Dynamic Selves.

Let’s take a look at what the approach looks like, based on an example of how one of us applied it in a recent project that researched habits of Italians around energy consumption. We drafted a design research plan aimed at investigating people’s attitudes toward energy consumption and sustainable behavior, with a focus on smart thermostats.

1. Choose the right sample

When we contest personas, we are frequently met with the words” Where are you going to find a single person that encapsulates all the information from one of these advanced personas ]””? The answer is simple: you don’t have to. You don’t need to have information about many people for your insights to be deep and meaningful.

Quantity is key to qualitative research, but sampling accuracy is key to its validity. You select the people that best represent the “population” you’re designing for. If you select the right sample and have a deep understanding of the sampled people, you can infer how the rest of the population thinks and acts. There’s no need to study seven Susans and five Yuriys, one of each will do.

Similarly, you don’t need to understand Susan in fifteen different contexts. Once you’ve seen her in a few different settings, you’ve come to understand how Susan responds to various circumstances. Not Susan as an atomic being but Susan in relation to the surrounding environment: how she might act, feel, and think in different situations.

It becomes clear why each person should be portrayed as an individual because each already represents an abstraction of a larger group of people in similar circumstances because each person is representative of a portion of the total population you’re researching. You don’t want abstractions of abstractions! These selected people need to be understood and shown in their full expression, remaining in their microcosmos—and if you want to identify patterns you can focus on identifying patterns in contexts.

However, the question persists: how do you choose a representative sample? First of all, you have to consider what’s the target audience of the product or service you are designing: it might be useful to look at the company’s goals and strategy, the current customer base, and/or a possible future target audience.

We were creating an application for those who already have a smart thermostat in our example project. In the future, everyone could have a smart thermostat in their house. Right now, though, only early adopters own one. We needed to understand the reason behind these early adopters in order to build a significant sample. We therefore recruited by asking people why they had a smart thermostat and how they got it. There were those who had made the decision to purchase it, those who had been influenced by others to do so, and those who had located it in their homes. So we selected representatives of these three situations, from different age groups and geographical locations, with an equal balance of tech savvy and non-tech savvy participants.

2. Conduct your research

After having chosen and recruited your sample, conduct your research using ethnographic methodologies. This will give you more examples and anecdotes to enrich your qualitative data. In our example project, given COVID-19 restrictions, we converted an in-house ethnographic research effort into remote family interviews, conducted from home and accompanied by diary studies.

To gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and decision-making trade-offs, the research focus was not limited to the interviewee alone but deliberately included the whole family. With the additions or corrections made by wives, husbands, children, or occasionally even pets, each interviewee would tell a story that would then become much more engaging and precise. We also focused on the relationships with other meaningful people ( such as colleagues or distant family ) and all the behaviors that resulted from those relationships. This extensive field of study gave us the ability to create a vivid mental image of dynamic situations involving multiple actors.

It’s essential that the scope of the research remains broad enough to be able to include all possible actors. Therefore, it normally works best to define broad research areas with macro questions. Interviews should be conducted in a semi-structured manner, with follow-up questions delve into subjects that the interviewee has blatantly mentioned. This open-minded “plan to be surprised” will yield the most insightful findings. One of our participants responded,” My wife doesn’t have the thermostat’s app installed; she uses WhatsApp instead,” when we asked how his family controlled the temperature in the house. If she wants to turn on the heater and she is not home, she will text me. I am her thermostat”.

3. Analysis: Create the Dynamic Selves

You begin to represent each individual with several Dynamic Selves, each” Self” representing one of the circumstances you have examined throughout the research analysis. The core of each Dynamic Self is a quote, which comes supported by a photo and a few relevant demographics that illustrate the wider context. The research findings themselves will show which demographics are relevant to show. The key demographics were family type, number and type of homes owned, economic status, and technological maturity in our case because our research focused on families and their way of life to understand their needs for thermal regulation. ( We also included the individual’s name and age, but they’re optional—we included them to ease the stakeholders ‘ transition from personas and be able to connect multiple actions and contexts to the same person ).

Interviews must be video-recorded in order to capture precise quotes, and notes must be as much as possible taken verbatim. This is essential to the truthfulness of the several Selves of each participant. In the case of real-life ethnographic research, photos of the context and anonymized actors are essential to build realistic Selves. As long as these photos are realistic and depict meaningful actions that you associate with your participants, they should be taken directly from field research, but an evocative and representative image can also work. For example, one of our interviewees told us about his mountain home where he used to spend every weekend with his family. We depicted him hiking with his young daughter as a result.

At the end of the research analysis, we displayed all of the Selves ‘” cards” on a single canvas, categorized by activities. Each card displayed a situation, represented by a quote and a unique photo. Each participant had several cards about themselves.

4. Identify potential design challenges

Once you have collected all main quotes from the interview transcripts and diaries, and laid them all down as Self cards, you will see patterns emerge. These patterns will highlight the opportunity areas for new product creation, new functionalities, and new services—for new design.

There was a particularly intriguing insight around the concept of humidity in our example project. We realized that people don’t know what humidity is and why it is important to monitor it for health: an environment that’s too dry or too wet can cause respiratory problems or worsen existing ones. This made clear that our client had a significant opportunity to train users about the concept and work as a health advisor.

Benefits of Dynamic Selves

When you use the Dynamic Selves approach in your research, you start to notice unique social relations, peculiar situations real people face and the actions that follow, and that people are surrounded by changing environments. One of the participants in our thermostat project, Davide, has come to know as a boyfriend, dog lover, and tech nut.

Davide is an individual we might have once reduced to a persona called “tech enthusiast”. However, there are also those who are wealthy or poor who are tech enthusiasts, whether they are single or have families. Their motivations and priorities when deciding to purchase a new thermostat can be opposite according to these different frames.

Once you have understood Davide in multiple situations, and for each situation have understood in sufficient depth the underlying reasons for his behavior, you’re able to generalize how he would act in another situation. You can infer what he would think and do in the circumstances ( or scenarios ) you design for using your understanding of him.

The Dynamic Selves approach aims to dismiss the conflicted dual purpose of personas—to summarize and empathize at the same time—by separating your research summary from the people you’re seeking to empathize with. This is crucial because scale affects how we feel empathy for people; the bigger the group, the smaller it is to feel empathy for others. We feel the strongest empathy for individuals we can personally relate to.

If you take a real person as inspiration for your design, you no longer need to create an artificial character. No more creating new plot devices to “realize” the character, no more implausible bias. It’s simply how this person is in real life. We all know that these characters don’t really exist, so in our experience personas quickly turn into nothing more than a name in our priority guides and prototype screens.

Another powerful benefit of the Dynamic Selves approach is that it raises the stakes of your work: if you mess up your design, someone real, a person you and the team know and have met, is going to feel the consequences. It might stop you from taking shortcuts and will remind you to conduct daily checks on your designs.

Finally, real people in their specific contexts provide a better foundation for anecdotal storytelling and are thus more persuasive. Documentation of real research is essential in achieving this result. It reinforces your design arguments by adding more weight and urgency:” When I met Alessandra, the conditions of her workplace struck me. Noise, bad ergonomics, lack of light, you name it. If we go for this functionality, I’m afraid we’re going to add complexity to her life”.

Conclusion

In their article on Mindsets, Designit mentioned that “design thinking tools offer a shortcut to deal with reality’s complexities, but this process of simplification can occasionally flatten out people’s lives into a few general characteristics.” Unfortunately, personas have been culprits in a crime of oversimplification. They fail to account for the complex nature of our users ‘ decision-making processes and don’t take into account the fact that people are immersed in environments.

Design needs simplification but not generalization. You have to look at the research elements that stand out: the sentences that captured your attention, the images that struck you, the sounds that linger. Use those as metaphors for the person in all of their contexts. Both insights and people come with a context, they cannot be cut from that context because it would remove meaning.

It’s high time for design to break away from fiction and use reality as our guide and inspiration, in all of its messy, surprising, and unquantifiable beauty.